Audience Has Big Laughs For Backwoods Foursome

Having firmly established his place as America' foremost expert on redneck behavior, comedian Jeff Foxworthy does not offer much in the way of surprises in his stand-up act.

That was apparently good news for the full house at the Mohegan Sun's Uncas Pavilion Friday night, which roared along to a long line of family-friendly stories of backwards living as told by Foxworthy and the trio of like-styled comics who fill out his Blue Collar Comedy Tour.

The show ran 21/2 hours without a break, kicking off with a 10 minute set by Larry the Cable Guy. He offered up a wide selection of Southern cliches, from dating his aunt to having a sister so fat that he has to hire a rodeo clown to distract her when he brings home groceries, all of which dripped from his mouth in a deep Southern drawl.

His routine was built on gags similar in mentality to his recounting of waking from a dream of drinking the world's biggest margarita to discover salt on the toilet bowl rim, but he was generally enjoyable.

Texas native Ron White followed with 10 minutes of his own marginally funny bits, showing a little something about his audience when his comment that his home state ``has the death penalty, and we use it'' earned a loud cheer.

His stage persona was built on being willfully obnoxious and hard-drinking, offering his ideas on new ad slogans (``Diamonds -- that'll shut her up''), using a river as a urinal and stopping to say ``Oh, there's my ride'' when the sound of a nearby siren bled into the tent venue.

The show's second billing belonged to Bill Engvall, whose material was primarily anecdotal humor focusing squarely on his own ineptitude as a father. He covered parent-teacher conferences, the indignities of potty training one's children and the hazards of taking a cross-country trip in the car, subjects that went over well with the predominantly 40-plus audience. He affably offered that if people really want to get to work on time, ``they should make an alarm clock that sounds like a baby barfing,'' because that's an instant wake-up call for any parent.

Foxworthy had a tough challenge distinguishing himself from Engvall, because their styles and home life-oriented material were so similar that he could hardly help going in directions that had just been covered minutes before.

Foxworthy's bits on toilet training were similar to his predecessor's, but he was distinctive enough that it didn't feel repetitive. Of course, much of his material poked fun at his fellow rednecks, a litany of wisdom along the lines of ``NASCAR fans don't like Jeff Gordon because he enunciates, and there's no place in the sport for that.''

The audience ate it up, giving him a standing ovation when he finished.

The show closed with a half-hour encore during which all four comics returned to the stage and the audience hooted and whooped to their most famous material.